Jazz: A Regional Exploration

Author: Scott Yanow

Publication date: 2005

Greenwood Guides to American Roots Music

Greenwood Press

“Arising out of the syncopated rhythms of African music, Cajun songs, and Ragtime, jazz evolved in many "scenes" throughout the country. The "Young Lions" jazz movement in New Orleans spread up the Mississippi in the northern Migration. Missouri communities such as St. Louis and Sedalia became jazz centers, while Count Basie led a revolution in Kansas City. Chicago became a center of freewheeling jazz in the 1920s with the efforts of Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, and Louis Armstrong, while classic jazz and swing took root in New York City in the '30s and '40s behind Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, and Benny Goodman, the "King of Swing." And while "boogie woogie" and "hot jazz" grew out of the Big Apple, a generation of experimental musicians such as Chet Baker and Stan Kenton stood at the forefront of West Coast jazz and the Los Angeles scene. Noted jazz writer Scott Yanow carefully traces the evolution of jazz from regional manifestations to an increasingly national language at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries."